When former Chicago Tribune newspaper editor Jim Squires became a horse breeder in bluegrass Kentucky, no one believed he would making a living. But Squires had been raising horses for 20 years, including equine athletes.

This is Squires’s rollicking tale of how a novice in the world of Kentucky horse culture did more than merely stay in business: he brought together the stallion and mare who produced Monarchos, the colt who won the 2001 Kentucky Derby.

Read a sample of this book on before you purchase it.

Squires lays bare the close-knit and secretive world of the thoroughbred community, tweaking the self-important owners at the Keeneland and Saratoga auctions, and skewering the preening trainers at Churchill Downs and Gulfstream Park. Black and white photos.

“The idea that I could get one all the way to the Kentucky Derby is strictly a fairy tale, and someone with a greater understanding of life than I have will have to explain how I bred him,” Squires told PBS Online NewsHour.

“John Steinbeck once went [to the Kentucky Derby], and he said it was an emotion, turbulence, one of the most satisfying experiences he’d ever had in life,” Squires continues. “And if you’re there watching the race, it’s a time when time stands still. There is no past. There is no future. There is only now.”

“Squires weaves a spellbinding tale of millionaire owners, trainers, and auction houses,” writes Library Journal. “It is a journey of great frustration, doubt, hope, and, more than anything, enormous good luck when a Derby prospect can be noticed, trained appropriately, and prevented from career-ending injury.”